Cleaning Up

I've had a chance to rotate through all four of the brigade positions that we use in class and I have to say that they each have their pros and cons, and they are all very important to the running of a Classical French Dining Room. I was in the Debarrasseur position again today and I realized that this position really is key to the running of the room. The Debs make everything happen. We clear tables, pour water, tidy up after the chefs, and take care of the little details that make the meal what it is.

French Wine!

Today we worked on more French Wines... we left Bordeaux for Burgundy and the wine labeling laws got even more chaotic. Thanks to the WSET classes I had an inkling of what was coming, but having to learn it in a room with 20 people who don't particularly care about it and just want to get done with lecture is very different from learning about it in a room of 20 people who are truly interested in wine.

Burgundy is crazy with how they label wine, but sometimes you just have to let go and realize that the French do things in their own way. And they make some of the best damn wine out there, so sometimes you just have to learn the rules and go with it. You can't argue with people about it, it just is what it is!

Playing with Fire!

Today I was the Chef for my brigade. This meant I really did very little other than whip up a table side Caesar Salad for one table and make dessert for another.

Okay... so there might have been a little more to it since dessert was "Bananas Flambe" Flambe... as in on fire!

Since the school is still standing and there are no scorch marks anywhere in the advanced dining room classroom it is safe to say that all went well. I was pretty comfortable making the dessert, and the biggest hiccup I had was peeling the banana with a knife and fork!

Full Service!

Today was our first day of full service in the kitchen. All things considered the day went really well. We didn't have a lot of food to produce and everything was from one country so the food made sense!

It was fun to "work the line" today and create food to order. It is the closest to a real restaurant situation that I have been in today. The class really came together and while some of us were producing the food the rest of the class was cleaning up so that we would all have less to do after service.

Tomorrow we head to Africa...

How Many Countries?

Today we picked up some of the "slack" from not really cooking for the past few days. Instead of regular service we threw a buffet hitting food from... Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, the Philippines and India! Yep... all 8 of those countries were represented on a "wild international buffet."

It was a ton of cooking and a variety of different styles for everyone to be working on, but we managed to get it all out for people to eat and eat they did! I was bummed that we didn't have a full day for India as it is one of my very favorite countries to eat from, but I did see how I can make naan bread at without a tandori oven!!

Yan Can Cook...

As a general rule, the International Cuisine class doesn't go to see the Distinguished Visiting Chef lectures. This is because we are responsible for creating the food for the dining room class to serve at lunch.

Today we broke the "general rule."

Since the class has been involved with preparing a variety of things that have gone along with Chef Yan and his visit to JWU Chef Pearson took us to see the presentation. What was scheduled to run 60- 75 minutes went for nearly 2.5 HOURS! Chef Yan has such an amazing way of presenting his talent that you don't even realize that you have been sitting on the edge of your seat for hours. He can do things with a knife that I only dream of...
*carrot slices so think that you can place on a piece of paper and read through
*yellow pepper that is slivered to about the thickness of dental floss
*garlic turned to paste in the blink of an eye
*one tomato sliced so thin that you could cover an entire dinner plate with the slices
and the most amazing part...
*breaking down a chicken in 15 seconds.

The last one is amazing to me, when I had my meatcutting practical it took me 30 minutes to break one chicken down. Here is a video, not from today, but this is pretty close to what he did today!

The People That You Meet...

Today I was reminded of the Mr. Rodgers song about "the people that you meet when you're walking down the street in your neighborhood." At the end of a long day of work I stepped on to the elevator with fellow students and a small cluster of people from one of the upstairs offices. In looking at one of the gentlemen in the group he seems familiar, but I can't quite place him. Upon reaching the ground floor the cluster of people step off and Chef Calenda, who had been on the elevator with us, asks if anyone knows who was riding with us. It turns out that the familiar looking gentleman was Chef Martin Yan! Martin Yan... as in the tv show Yan Can Cook, tons of cookbooks and a slew of California restaurants.

What was he doing at Johnson & Wales in Charlotte, North Carolina of all places... Well, he is a visiting chef as well as being the guest of honor at a dinner event that our International Cuisine class has spent the past two days doing major prep work for! Tomorrow he will be giving a lecture and demonstration for the students and I am really looking forward to seeing it.

Magic Tricks

According to Chef Pearson cooking is just a bunch of magic tricks. In thinking this over I realize that he might just be right. If you think about it, taking a variety of different raw products and mixing them up and creating something totally different is magic! The more you practice your craft the better you get at it, when you start magic you start with the card tricks and at some point you will be able to make a building vanish. With cooking you start with the basics and work to the big showy things.

Today was the start of my 3rd and final trimester of classes at Johnson & Wales. I have a full slate of interesting labs that I'm really looking forward to. The new trimester brings together yet another different group of people, so once again there will be adjustment time as we learn to work as a group and support each other to get the work done.

International cuisine should be a really interesting class, we will be touching on quite a few countries in Asia as well as a quick stop in Italy.

Beef Stew

Practicals day 3 of 3. Not only am I done with my practical exams, I am done with this trimester! I am more than ready for a week off!

Today I was cooking again, this time I was totally comfortable with what I was doing and with the meat I was given. My father has a beef stew that he has been making for as long as I can remember so when I was handed a hunk of beef I knew exactly what I was going to do!

I altered the recipe a bit from what dad does... I used a variety of onions (pearl, yellow and shallots) instead of just one type and put the mushrooms in at the start so that their flavor could spread through the whole dish.

That gamble played off and Chef really enjoyed the mix of different flavors that the variety of onions brought to the dish.

It was a great way to end the second trimester at Johnson & Wales!

Comis

Practicals... Day 2 of 3.
Today was a fun fluffy day, I didn't actually have a practical exam today I was in the role of helper. I floated around the room helping out if I was needed. I also took a mid morning field trip to starbucks to grab a mocha for me and a latte for Chef. A few of us who were on the comis team today made fresh lemonade... I was entertained by the fact that as we are making this drink that is associated with summer there were a few flurries of snow drifting down from the clouds.

After the lemonade we experimented with an Indian rice pudding and a roasted veggie medley... not exactly flavors that go together, but it was fun to play with food.

The Little Things DO Matter!

Ox Tails...

Day 1 of 3 days of practical exams... and I get to braise ox tails. Prior to this morning I have cooked ox tails all of... oh wait... I've NEVER cooked them before!

With a grade in the balance of how this dish turns out I decided to keep it super simple flavor wise. I cut a very basic mirepoix of celery, carrot and onion, for a little extra I added some pearl onions and some fresh sprigs of oregano. From there I followed the 9 steps of braising!

1. mise en place (get it all together... thought up what I was doing!)
2. prep main ingredient (trimmed some of the fat from the very fatty ox tails)
3. Sear meat (nice hot braising dish with some oil in it too. Seared the ox tails in batches and got them all pretty and carmelized on the outside)
4. Sear aeromatics (where I took all the meat out of the pan and added in the mirepoix I'd cut up earlier and got a hint of color on them.)
5. Deglaze (I added a healthy amount of red wine to the mirepoix and scraped all the yummy good bits off the bottom of the pan.)
6. Return the meat (I added the ox tails back to the pan and filled it with veal stock til the ox tails were almost submerged, but not quite)
7. Seal (exactly what it sounds like... I got a nice tight seal on the pan with heavy duty tin foil)
8. Oven (again... into the oven it went until it was "fork tender." Because ox tails are so tough it took a good long while to braise and I checked it every 30 minutes or so to be sure that there was still enough liquid in the pot.)
9. Create Sauce (once the meat is done you take it out of the pan and strain what is in the pot so that you have just the liquid to work with. I took the liquid and cranked the heat up and let it reduce to a thick syrupy goo that was divine!)

Turns out that the first time was the charm with ox tails... Chef said that the dish was fantastic and the sauce was perfect!

Monday...

Mondays are never the best day of the week, and today was no exception. The whole class was just sort of "off." The required work got taken care of, but nothing was over the top fantastic. I think that it had a bit to do with the fact that we'd just come off a 5 day week and that we were in the home stretch to spring break.

Hopefully we will survive these next four days...

Why am I Eating Rabbit at 8:30am?

It is thoughts like this filter through my head at least once a day while at JWU. With class starting at 7am, we are usually cooking not long after that so food is being tasted. I've never been a fan of eating early, my mother would force me to eat breakfast when I was a kid, so having to taste food, especially heavy food is a challenge for me in the mornings. The rabbit was pretty good, and when we were done preparing the dish it was fantastic.

Aside from the rabbit I worked on a new knife cut today... the Tourne! If you've ever eaten out and seen potatoes (carrots and hearty root veggies are also used) that are shaped similar like footballs that is probably a tourne cut. It is pretty easy to do once you get the hang of the motion and chef was complimenting mine after a few quick moments of playing with the knife.

All I Want is Salad...

Or maybe a vegetable that hasn't been braised or stewed or covered in butter. I mentioned that to Chef today and he laughed and pretty much said that the closest I could get to salad in this class would be an endive. My eyes lit up as I thought of a salad that I could whip up the following day, then he burst my happy salad bubble by telling me that not only would he find me an endive or three that he would bring me a recipe for braising them.

I understand that we need to be eating the food that we are cooking, but the food in this class is so incredibly heavy it is unreal, and it is a huge amount of meat!

Letting People Fail

I have a hard time letting people fail when I think that I can help. There is a girl in my work group who doesn't quite get what we're doing, and to be honest she hasn't really gotten it all term. Some of the chefs we have worked with have been telling us to help her, to work with her, to support her. The chef we have now has told us to let her make mistakes, to not fix things behind her, and to stop coddling her. He's told us to let her fail. While some might see this as cruel, I sort of see it as a weight lifted off my shoulders. I have been given permission to really focus on my work, I realize this might seem selfish, but that is the way things are. I have a limited time at Johnson & Wales, and I am going to make the very most of it that I can.

Braising and Fresh Pasta

Today was my first day working in the kitchen today, and it was great fun! My group had to create a braised beef and vegetable dish, a carrot and onion dish, a puttanesca sauce and fresh pasta!

The braised beef was super easy and wonderfully delicious. I always think of braising as this long drawn out process that has tons of steps and requires lots of work. In truth it is 9 steps. Nine simple, easy, tidy steps. Knowing this it bums me out that spring is around the corner and there won't be many days I can braise something for dinner. While I'm not a huge fan of cooked carrots the dish was pretty darn good.

Fresh pasta is something I've never made before and will totally make again. I think there might be a pasta machine attachment for my super duper kitchen aid mixer added to my wish list of fun kitchen gadgets. Making the pasta is super easy; I really don't see why I bother buying the stuff...

Traditionally Speaking

Today I started Traditional European, my last class of the 2nd trimester, I can't believe how quickly time has flown by! In this class we will be doing lots of stewing and braising. Those two cooking methods can turn even the toughest cuts of meat into something delicious.

Family Style

Last day of this class and what a great time it has been! I've loved this class, the little things I've learned about how to serve and the different styles of service will serve me well from here on out. Today was a bit more casual in the dining room. Instead of everyone having their own table to serve we worked in groups of 4 to serve tables of 10. It was interesting to work in groups, having to coordinate the service of the table took a few minutes to figure out but once we got the choreography worked out it was actually fun.

Practically Speaking

Today was practical day for most of the class, thankfully I got mine done with yesterday. I got to be the "bartender" for the class, which means that I had to have all the beverages set up and ready to go for my fellow students when they came through the service bar. It was a very low stress day for me today!

Tea Party!

Today was the tea tasting, other than the food and wine pairing this was a day I was looking forward to. I love hot tea and the service that goes with a proper afternoon tea. Ms. C, our fantastic instructor, asked two of us to make scones for the class. Scones are something that I not only adore but have a killer recipe for! The lemon poppy seed scones and fresh lemon curd were a huge hit today!

Wine Pairing

Today was one of my very favorite days in class! It was food and wine pairing day today. I have done this very cool deconstructed tasting three times now and I always find something new that I either adore or can't stand. The one that makes me laugh the most is the pairing of a Riesling and something spicy!

Allergies

We had a really interesting discussion on allergies today and what servers and managers can do to work with guests who have allergies. Allergies are a hot topic in the food world because when not taken seriously the consequences can be horrible.

First Day of Service

Today went really well, or what I define as really well. I served my first table of guests and didn't spill a thing on anyone!

What Happens When it Snows?

Today should really be the third day of class but due to a 'snow day' we are on our second day. We have yet to serve a table, and really that is just fine with me. I'm not great at serving, so the longer I can put it off the happier I am. We learned more about the different kinds of service today. Let me tell you that there is far more to serving a table than just setting a plate down in front of a guest and telling them to enjoy.

Snow

So it snowed last Friday and we have a snow day today. And yes, I am well aware that today is Monday.

Out of the Kitchen Again

Once again we are out of a kitchen and sitting in a service class. This time we are learning about the front of the house, which is restaurant speak for "where the guests can go." Our instructor has a great background ans has worked at some fantastic properties so her knowledge base will be fantastic to learn from.

Fish & Chips

First a confession... I don't like fish. With the exception of a little lobster in Maine, New England Clam Chowder, a bite of shrimp every so often, and a tuna sandwich once in a blue moon I don't eat fish.

The deep frying practical exam involves making french fries and fried fish. This might sound easy but the knife cuts on the potatoes have to be perfect, all the fries should be exactly the same. And the fish... well we're not exactly getting breaded fillets from the nearest market. We have to break down a whole fish into fillets and then into portion sized cuts. I managed to break the fish down pretty easily. The technique is similar to the ones we learned in meatcutting class on larger animals.

With my fries and fillets in hand I headed to the deep fryer to coax all sorts of crispy goodness out of the raw product. The good news is that I succeeded! My fries were both crispy and fluffy and the fillets were cooked properly.

Grill Baby

The grilling practical was all about a simple perfect grilled steak. Diamond grill marks, medium-rare steak, and that is about it. We also had to make grilled asparagus, roasted potatoes, and a sauce.

All in all it went pretty darn well for me today. I got my grill marks right, my sides looked good, and the "sauce" I made went over really well. For my sauce I made a simple compound butter with garlic paste and rosemary.

Tomorrow is the final written exam and the frying practical. In the practical I'll have to make fish and chips.

The Only One Making Risotto

Today was the first day of practical exams for this class...

I was in the roasting group today and we each had to roast a chicken, make a pan gravy, saute a medley of green beans & julienne cut carrots, and serve it with a side of either mushroom risotto or red rice pilaf. Out of the 6 of us, I was the only one who decided to make the risotto.

I opted for the risotto because I know how to make it, I've made it in class, I had the time to make it, and I needed the thirty minutes at the stove spent stirring to clear my thoughts and mentally design my plate presentation. My decision was a good one because I ended up with a very pretty plate and something different, which is always good! Chef had good things to say about my whole plate, which was nice to hear and I got a great score.

Tomorrow we have the second leg of practical exams and I will be grilling. I've been practicing my 'grill marks' with the grill pan that I got for Christmas. I can now make beautiful diamonds on my grilled products, and hopefully that will pay off tomorrow.

Debate Day

French Settlers vs. Native Americans in Louisiana...
A simple topic for debate if you have the side of the French and thankfully my group did! We were able to show that the French brought all sorts of techniques and foods with them that the Native Americans didn't have and that these foods and techniques are still in use today.

Peeling Ginger

Today we highlighted Jamaican flavors and I worked on a jerk marinade for the chicken we would be grilling. This marinade is something that I will be putting into my rotation of things I like to cook. The flavors in it are familiar yet have a different twist. I can see this being a fantastic summer chicken dish.

In making the marinade I learned that you don't peel ginger with a peeler, a knife or anything else you use the edge of a spoon and scrape the skin off!

French Fry Tasting!

Today was the day we had sadly put off for more than enough days. We started the day with a lecture about the three main types of potatoes we took the next step and saw how those differences manifested themselves in the cooking process. The best way to see how the potatoes stand up is to fry them and see what kind of fry they make.

The Waxy (yukon gold), Russett and Chef potatoes were cut into beautiful uniform fries, blanched, frozen, and brought out to swim in the fresh fry oil! In looking at them there were slight variations in form and color once they came out of the oil. The real differences were seen when we started tasting them...

The Russett potatoes made a fry with a super crisp outside and the fluffy soft interior that is similar to a baked potato.

The Chef potatoes made a middle of the road fry, nothing super to write home about, but I'd still eat and enjoy them.

The Waxy potatoes made an interesting fry. This potato had the biggest taste difference of the three, I can't quite point out what it was that tasted different, but there was something that did.

All said... it was a pretty tasty day!

Substitute Chef

A different take on things, a new view point, another method to use... these are all things that you get when your regular chef is unable to come to class and the chef who teaches the evening section takes over for the day. It was actually really nice to have a different chef, not because I dislike the current one, but because the more chefs and their methods I can be exposed to the happier I am and more I can get out of my education.

Steak Tasting!

One of the ways that life is totally different at Johnson & Wales from life in the real world is that how often in the real world do you line up beautifully grilled flank, skirt, and rib-eye steaks for a side by side by side tasting? At Johnson & Wales this type of thing is almost normal. It is such fun to see great food products lined up and waiting to be tasted! And having them lined up you can really taste the difference between them and think of different applications for each steak.

The other very cool thing today was that the dean of the culinary school did a presentation on healthy cooking for us. He was very interesting to watch and I really enjoyed the program. His base of knowledge is amazing and the passion he has for his craft shines!

Cooking For Others.

For the past 9 days I've been making soups, stocks, and sauces. While these are vitally important components of cooking, there is something comforting about being in a full kitchen again and cooking for people!

Yes, in baking and pastry we baked all sorts of yummy good things for other classes to use and in SSS we created the stocks that other classes need... but there is something so fulfilling about spending all morning cooking and knowing that there will be other classes, deans, and other chefs coming to eat the food that you have prepared.

In New World Cuisine Chef Brener will lead us through the fundamentals of roasting, grilling and deep frying using the flavor profiles that are found in "New World" countries. So lots of South American, Central American and Island influences. Everything we made today was fantastic and I can't wait for tomorrow!

Who Won the Bechamel Grudge Match?

Day 9 of Stocks, Sauces & Soups... that brings us to another round of practical tests.

Knife cuts were a breeze... I rather enjoy the discipline of them, while my knife and I still don't have a fantastic relationship it is getting better and I'm learning to get a straight cut more of the time.

Sauces...
The Hollandaise and Bernaise sauces were great, chef liked them and I was pleased with them.
The Bechamel sauce was not as easy as I would have liked, but it got done with out a major catastrophe! The sauces I made from the bechamel tasted decent as well.

I had a great 9 days in this class and it really is the major building block of what happens in a kitchen, especially a classical French kitchen.

Me vs. The Bechamel Sauce

Bechamel Sauce... that classic base of milk and roux that is the base of all sorts of nice creamy sauces. You have got to have a perfect bechamel for the other sauces to taste right.

What is perfect...
1. Starchy (floury) taste cooked out... this can take any where from a few minutes to hours.
2. Nappe consistency... a texture thing, it has to coat the back of a spoon and hold a trail when you run your finger through it.
3. Seasoning... salt and white pepper and just a touch of nutmeg, not enough to make it "taste like Christmas" but enough to just give it a little sparkle of extra flavor.

Now I've made a good bechamel sauce in class more than once this term, but today in the 3 batches I made today I had trouble. The starchy taste just wouldn't cook out, which led to the bottom of the pot scorching and the sauce getting to the right consistency but tasting burnt, which means that it ended up in the trash can.

Hopefully I have better luck with the bechamel sauce tomorrow, as it is one of the mother sauces that we have to make and two of our compound sauces use it as a base!

I Can Totally Clog Your Arteries!

Today was all about the many sauces that belong to the "artery clogging" family. The key member of this family is a staple of Sunday brunches around the country, a wonderful topping for asparagus and, a lovely mother sauce... none other than the one and only Hollandaise! Hollandaise is rather deceptive, looking at the ingredients it seems simple, but there is the whole delicate dance of an emulsion. And the truth about emulsions is that they are flat out hard to work with and you have a pretty darn good chance of them not playing nice and having to start over. The good news is that my Hollandiase came out correct the first time, a little cold, but that was an easy fix.

Being a mother sauce you can toss something into Hollandaise and create a new sauce! The sauce we created today was Bearnaise. I adore Bearnaise Sauce... I'm not sure how my arteries feel about this, but it is not like I'm drinking cups of this stuff every day... just having it with some beautifully cooked beef. To get Bearnaise from Hollandaise all you do is add in a reduction of tarragon, shallots, and white wine. I know, totally simple!

Also bubbling away in the class room today were pot of shrimp bisque, more Bechamel, Mornay and Soublise sauces. I'm still having issues with my patience when making the Bechamel... I hate waiting for the starch to cook out! But then again I have very little patience to begin with!

Miss Independent!

While yesterday was mother sauces today was all about the independent ones. The sauces that are out there all alone; butter, broken butter, compound butter, salsa (yep it's a sauce!), relish... I could go on, but my fingers would fall off it I kept listing them!

Each group had to make a compound butter today, ours went with butter, garlic, lemon zest, thyme, and basil. Sounds odd, but really it tastes good! I'd been lobbying for rosemary, but there wasn't any in the fridge. We also made a cream of mushroom soup that turned out decently, each group had a slightly different flavor in their soup, but that is to be expected, and truly part of the fun!

Knife cuts, the bane of my existence, rounded out the day. The cuts are exacting and everything has to line up for them to turn out right. I hold my wrist at a terribly odd angle (it isn't odd for holding the reins when riding a horse, but really doesn't work too well for holding a knife) so I really must pay attention to my hand position, where the knife is going, heck even how I'm standing! Yes where your feet are make a huge difference when you cut, I totally didn't believe it but the proof is there and I do have better results when I'm standing one way as opposed to another. My patience paid off today and Chef said that not only were my knife cuts improving, but my orange supremes were fantastic!

Mother of All...

Today we got to the true heart of the stocks, sauces and soups class... mother sauces. This is where all the goodness comes from! Without these leading ladies there would be no joy. Food would be sad and bland.

Okay... not really sad and bland, but not nearly as fun! We've been working with the veloute for a day or two already so it was a quick refresher and the bechamel is incredibly similar, you are just using a different roux (white not blonde) and a different liquid (milk not white stock.) The espanole sauce is a different ball game! There are vegetables to cut up, tomato paste to play with and some bacon. If anything the espanole sauce is more like a stock than just a sauce.

We also began to work with the mother sauces and see how they turn into other things. The veloute we made yesterday got mixed with heavy cream, shallots, tarragon and white wine to become white tarragon sauce!

Back In The Kitchen

After a well deserved vacation where I did very little cooking (I love that my family has people who love to cook in it) today was back to the reality of Johnson & Wales and life in the kitchen.

We did a madcap review of all sorts of things in class today before getting into the production of stocks (white chicken, brown chicken, white fish and, brown veg), soups (minestrone all around) and sauces (pesto & veloute.)

Veloute is a totally basic white sauce... yet good lord it can be contrary to make! One starts with a roux and then adds chicken stock. Simple sounding, now there is also the matter of the constant stirring, the cooking out of the starch, the need for it to be the correct viscosity. Such fun! Oh and if the stuff gets too hot and you taste it... say good bye to your taste buds for a few days! Thankfully I didn't make that mistake today, I learned my lesson before the break!

Tomorrow we launch into "Mother Sauces" which is the heart of the class, I'm really looking forward to this. I know how to make some of them, but I'm sure that I'll learn new ways and techniques...